jaymcminn

That is an excellent color for a Stratos. Beautiful build!

Thanks Mario! Just phone pics with my Google Pixel 6 and the lighting rig I usually use with my DSLR. One thing I just noticed is lots of fingerprints on the aluminum bits... she's going to a show in Largo FL this weekend and I'm definitely gonna have to polish those out!

This is Tamiya's 1/12 scale Caterham Super Seven BDR. For those who aren't familiar, the Caterham 7 is a continuation of the Lotus 7, which was originally introduced as an easily buildable kit car by Colin Chapman in 1957. When Chapman discontinued production of the 7 in 1972, Caterham bought the rights and the 7 has been in production ever since, continuously being updated and modernized. The 7 is built of aluminum panels over a steel tube frame with fiberglass fenders and nose cone. The Tamiya kit represents an early 90s "BDR" featuring a Cosworth-tuned 1.7 litre Ford engine producing 150 horsepower, more than sufficient to properly motivate a car weighing roughly half a ton. The Tamiya kit is breathtaking. The entire body is made of aluminum except for the plastic nose and fenders. About 90% of the assembly is done with hundreds of screws and bolts. The attention to detail is excellent, and it looks fantastic when done. I decided early on to show some, but not all, of the bare aluminum panels and decided on Splash Paints Bentley Racing Green for the main body color. The tip of the nose cone is Tamiya Camel Yellow. The interior is Tamiya Dull red. The chrome plated metal exhaust was airbrushed with Tamiya clears and Vallejo Metal Color with Tamiya Weathering Master soot at the tip. Interior carpet is provided by Tamiya as pre-cut self-adhesive pieces and the seat belts are the pre-printed fabric kit pieces. Kit details like the K&N-branded air filters and soldered front grille piece really help sell the realism of the finished model. The only major addition I made to the kit was the wind deflectors which I scratched from clear styrene and aluminum sheet. They add a great finishing touch. The number plates are a nod to the most famous Lotus 7, the car Patrick McGoohan drove in "The Prisoner". His was KAR 120C... since mine is a later car in a Prisoner-inspired color scheme I went with KAR 120D. This was a fantastic build with some minor frustrations, mostly due to fitting tiny screws into tight places that would be a bit of a faff on a 1:1 Caterham. The final result is an excellent model that lives up to its reputation as one of Tamiya's best! Anyway, enough talking... on to the pics!

That is really beautiful. Hope mine turns out half this good!

I have built several of the 1/12 scale 70s Tamiya kits. For their age they're absolutely wonderful. Out of the box they're good, with some TLC and detail work they can be superlative. This is the Porsche 934. Probably 90% out-of-box. The Datsun 240zg. The Lotus 72... wish I had some better pics handy. Be prepared for some weirdness... Tamiya was overly fond of molding interior parts as well as some trim parts in a soft black vinyl. Sometimes the working features , umm, don't. Many of these kits have been reissued frequently and later issues include additional PE and detail parts. Additionally, newer Tamiya decals are vastly superior to the old ones.

I can point out all the flaws in every single model I complete. Some have won contests. One was recently an MCM cover car. I can name all the near misses that almost got some put back in the box, all the slightly dodgy fixes, every dust speck and wire that gets tucked in under something because I just can't figure out where it goes. But because these things are imperfect, and that I was able through occasional cleverness and frequent blind luck to turn them into models that I am proud to display and show to others, they are special to me. What's funny is that once I get some distance from a build, the memory of those flaws diminishes but the pride in my work doesn't. If perfection stands in the way of a builder expressing his creativity and talent and hopefully sharing it with others it's highly overrated.

Absolutely beautiful rendition of the Caracciola coupe. Those Jo-Han Mercedes are some of the best classic car kits ever produced. I built the Special Roadster a few years back and was blown away by how well-engineered these kits are.

Naples got lucky with Ian. Coastal areas got hit and the Pier was wrecked, but for the most part the town came through okay. Further inland there was little to no damage- I lost power at my house 5 miles inland for a grand total of 10 hours. Ft.Myers Beach is a wreck, and will be rebuilt in a totally different way. A lot of the people who lost their houses there won't be able to afford to rebuild to the new codes and many of the people whose houses are repairable won't be able to afford the ridiculous insurance rates going forward. Agreed that Revs is an incredible museum. There are definitely larger collections out there but Revs is really distinctive for its collection of significant and beautiful cars as well as its dedication to preserving rather than over-the-top restoring them.

Allowed and encouraged. Revs more or less requires tickets to be purchased in advance to limit the number of people in the museum at any given time. If you're used to auto museums with cars behind velvet ropes and barriers Revs will be a bit of a shock... no ropes, no barriers. Of course you can't get in the cars and make "vroom vroom" noises, but you can get fantastic pictures from all angles. It's really the best auto museum you've never heard of!

Meguiar's Ultimate is fantastic, as well as being readily available. The compound and polish are basically magic. I use them on my 1:1 cars as well as my models... if I get a decent final finish on my paint I can work out any minor texture without resorting to sandpaper or polishing cloths. Plus the compound and polish don't leave any residue, so if you need to reshoot clear coat you don't have to worry about fisheyes or other paint issues.

Italeri Ferrari 275GTB. My LHS acquired a nice collection of vintage kits several years ago and they had this really rare kit priced at $39.00. I jumped on it, as well as a Fujimi Enthusiast Dino and Porsche 911 Turbo for about the same price. Online pic below, I'm trapped under a napping cat on the couch and don't dare disturb him to take a picture of the one in my stash!

This is the 1/12 scale Caterham BDR by Tamiya. I've had my eye on this kit since it came out back in the 90s and got a great deal on a sealed kit on eBay a month or so ago. It is an unusual kit for Tamiya and they've never made anything else quite like it. This kit was apparently a passion project for the Tamiya engineers. They wanted to create something that was as close as possible to the experience of building a 1:1 Caterham (appropriate as the Super Seven is available as a kit), so it goes together much the same way as the real thing. Real aluminum panels are screwed to the tube frame. The working suspension is then assembled to the tub, at which point the interior and engine are fitted. It's an impressive kit, beautifully engineered and impressively packaged. I decided to create a bit of an homage to the Lotus 7 from "The Prisoner" while still showing some of the bare aluminum panels. I decided to paint the aluminum hood and cowl as well as the fenders and nose cone in Splash Paints Bentley Racing Green Metallic. Rather than painting the whole nose cone yellow as the Prisoner car was, I went with a thin yellow stripe in Tamiya Camel Yellow. The painted parts after clear and polishing... Next I started on the complex front and rear suspension. The working shocks are pretty much standard Tamiya fare. The suspension arms are cast metal for additional strength. Everything goes together with tiny screws/bolts. The screwdriver Tamiya provides is excellent compared with most screwdrivers you get in a model kit, and I stuck a small neodymium magnet to it to magnetize it so it will hold the screws in place. The front suspension was incredibly fiddly as a lot of the mounting points are inside the tub and would be a bit of a challenge to get to on the 1:1! Bare frame... Front suspension in situ... The rear suspension is just as complex as the front but easier to mount up. The paint on the brake discs is Vallejo Metal Air Chrome. As chrome paint it's not great but it's excellent for a polished/shiny metal surface. Next up is the rollbar, which is chromed metal. The metal boot floor goes in now as well. These shots also give a sneak peek of the Dull Red interior color, which really pops against the green. That's where we stand now... more updates soon!

The good thing about doing a WIP thread is that it slows my building down. The bad thing about doing a WIP thread is that it slows my building down.

Beautiful model and great photography. It always feels good to be able to pull off a save like this! I wonder if your paint challenges came from using the X22 over the X27 clear red. X27 is a notoriously slow-drying paint too, and if the clear was laid down before it was fully dry it could have affected the drying time for the clear as well.

Polished up the Miata and drove down to a Cars and Coffee event hosted by the Revs Institute, the amazing local auto museum. It was a fantastic show, even with my scruffy little Merlot '95 Miata in attendance (hiding behind the green Lotus Elise in the first pic). Everything from Porsches (so...many...Porsches...) to muscle cars, including the restomod Superbird with a Hemi crate motor. The Porsche tractor in Lowenbrau/Pink Pig livery was great! Had fun with some fellow enthusiasts, got a sunburn and bought a lemonade for $7. All before 11am! Pics of some (but by no means all) of the great cars in attendance below...

I've had more airbrushes than I can remember. Binks Wren (my dad's airbrush) when I was a kid. Paasche VL and H. There was a Badger or two in there somewhere. Even (shudder) an Aztek for a brief period in the early 90s. About 10 years ago I finally bought an Iwata Revolution CR and haven't looked back since. It's the perfect all-rounder airbrush for me. I wouldn't mind trying out the pistol-grip Grex airbrushes, though.

I'm not gonna lie, a large portion of my decision to buy a first-generation Miata for my weekend toy a few years back as opposed to a later one was the pop-up headlamps.

Agreed.

Tamiya XF60 dark yellow would be in the ballpark.

Everything. Seriously though, I ground down the underside of the hood at the cowl as well as the surface of the dash where it meets the windshield unit.

Here you go... turned out nice for something that was such a PITA to get together!

Honestly, there's no real substitute for BMF for some things. Hasegawa does make a nice mirror foil. It's Mylar and has a little stretch to it, but it's thicker and doesn't cut as easily as BMF. It doesn't conform to tight details like vent windows as well either. I bought two sheets of BMF directly from the manufacturer a few months ago and it's fantastic, no wrinkles and it adheres perfectly. A sheet I bought from an Amazon seller a year or so ago was from the bad batch with poor adhesive. If that's the stuff you have, I definitely understand your frustration. BMF is tricky stuff, but it produces the best results for the modeler willing to put the work into learning how to use it. There isn't really a magical chrome product out there yet that works equally well for all applications, but BMF is by far the best for chrome trim around windows, body trim strips, etc.

Fine pair of Cortinas there!

Update for all... Spoon test with Splash Bentley Racing Green pearl over Tamiya grey primer with Ben's suggested clear mix. Absolutely fantastic. The Splash paint went down beautifully over the primer and the clear really does bring it to life. The self-leveling thinner is great, the extra drying time eliminates orange peel and lets the passes blend together perfectly!

SiriusXM, mostly for the indie channels. Amazon Music (paid tier) for albums and streaming channels based around artists I like.